The Educated Ape and Other Wonders of the Worlds Read online

  The Educated Ape

  and other Wonders

  of the Worlds

  Robert Rankin

  with illustrations by the author

  Copyright © Robert Rankin 2012

  All rights reserved

  The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Gollancz An imprint of the Orion Publishing Group

  Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN (Cased) 978 0 575 08641 8

  ISBN (Export Trade Paperback) 978 0 575 08642 5

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,

  Lymington, Hants

  Printed and hound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

  The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.

  www.thegoldensprout.com

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO

  FIELD COURT ACADEMY

  YEAR FIVE

  2010—2011

  YOU WERE SO MUCH FUN TO BE WITH

  ‘So little of what could happen, does happen.’

  Salvador Dali

  ‘History is not quite the way it was.’

  Humphrey Banana

  ‘Joy, joy moves the wheels

  In the universal time machine.’

  Friedrich Schiller

  ‘Ode to Joy’, 1785

  1889

  1

  he Bananary at Syon House raised many a manicured eyebrow.

  Although it was in its way the very acme of fin de siècle modernity, it so forcefully scorned the conventions of how a glass-house, intended for the cultivation of tropical fruit, should look as to cause tender ladies to reach for the smelling—salts.

  Syon House itself was an ancient pile, the work of Robert Adam, embodying those classical features and delicate touches that define the English country house to create a dwelling both noble and stately. A venerable residence all can admire.

  The Bananary, however, was something completely different. It boldly bulged from the rear of Syon House in an alarming fashion that troubled the hearts of those who dared to venture within, or viewed it from what was considered to be a safe distance.

  The geometry was deeply wrong, the shape beyond grotesque. For although wrought from the traditional mediums of ironwork and glass, these materials had been tortured into such weird and outré shapes and forms as beggared a sane description. This was clearly not the work of Sir Joseph Paxton, whose genius conceived the Crystal Palace. Nor was it that of Señor Voice, the London tram conductor turned architect whose radical confections were currently making him the toast of the town, and whose bagnio in Baker Street had been showered with awards by the Royal Institute of British Architects. The Bananary at Syon House left most folk lost for words.

  One gentleman who was rarely lost for words was the Society Columnist of The Times newspaper. He had recently visited Syon House to conduct an interview with its owner Lord Brentford. His lordship had, four years earlier, been pronounced ‘lost, believed dead’, having gone down, as it were, on the Empress of Mars when she crashed into a distant ocean upon her maiden voyage. His apparent return from the dead had caused quite a sensation in the British Empire’s capital. His horror at the Bananary, built in his absence and adjoined to the great house that was his by noble birth, had been — and still was — profound.

  The Society Columnist of The Times had made a note of his lordship’s quotable quotes.

  ‘If this abomination is to be likened unto anything,’ Lord Brentford had fumed, ‘it is a brazen blousy harlot who has unwelcomely attached herself to the well—tailored coat of a distinguished elderly gentleman!’

  ‘What manner of man,’ Lord Brentford further fumed, ‘could bring this blasphemy into being?’

  ‘It is —‘ and here he employed a phrase that would be reemployed many years later by a prince amongst men ‘— a monstrous carbuncle upon the face of a much-loved friend.’

  It would soon be torn down, Lord Brentford assured the Society Columnist, and he, Lord Brentford, would dance upon the scattered ruins as one would upon the grave of a conquered foe.

  Strong words!

  Exactly what the designer of the Bananary had to say about this was anybody’s guess. But then he was not a reader of The Times, nor was he even a man.

  He had, however, been born upon Earth, unlike many who, upon this warm summer’s evening, gaped open-jawed at the Bananary and thronged the electrically illuminated gardens of Syon Park.

  Fine and well-laid gardens, these, if perhaps overly planted with tall banana trees.

  The moneyed and titled elite had come at Lord Brentford’s request to celebrate his safe return and see him unveil his plans for a Grand Exposition: The Wonders of the Worlds. His lordship had spent his years in forced exile planning this extravaganza, and all, it was hoped, would soon be explained and revealed.

  The great and the good were gathered here.

  The rajahs and mandarins, princes and paladins,

  Bankers and barons and Lairds of Dunoon,

  The priest-kings and potentates, moguls of member states,

  Even the first man who walked on the Moon.

  As the Poetry Columnist of The Times so pleasantly put it.

  Before going on to put it some more for another twenty-seven verses.

  Here strolled emissaries and ecclesiastics from the planet Venus. Tall, imposing creatures these, gaunt, high-cheekboned and elegant, with golden eyes and elaborate coiffures. They gloried in robes of lustrous Venusian silks that swam with spectrums whose colours had no names on Earth.

  The ecclesiastics were exotic beings of ethereal beauty who had about them a quality of such erotic fascination that they all but mesmerised those men of Earth with whom they deigned to speak. Although their femininity appeared unquestionable, the nature of their sexuality had become the subject of both public debate and private fantasy. It was popularly rumoured that they were tri-maphrodite, being male and female and ‘of the spirit’, all in a single body. Nobody on Earth, however, knew for certain.

  The ecclesiastics wore diaphanous gowns that afforded tantalising glimpses of ambiguous somethings beneath. From their delicate fingers they swung brazen censers upon long gilded chains, censers which this evening breathed queer and haunting perfumes into an air already overburdened by the heady fragrance of bananas.

  The Ambassador of Jupiter was also present. Typical of his race, he was a fellow both hearty and rotund, given to immoderate laughter, extravagant gestures and a carefree disposition that most who met him found appealing. His skin, naturally grey as an elephant’s hide, was this evening toned a light pink in a respectful mimicry of Englishness. His deep-throated chucklings rattled the upper panes of the Bananary, eliciting fears of imminent collapse from the faint-hearted but further mirth from himself and his Jovian entourage.

  It was difficult not to like the Jovians. For although tensions between the three inhabited planets of this solar system — Venus, Jupiter and Earth — were oft-times somewhat strained, the jovial Jovians found greater favour amongst Londoners than the aloof and mysterious visitors from Venus.

  Although there was that certain something about the ecclesias
tics …

  There were, of course, no Martians present at this glamorous soirée, for the Martian race was happily extinct!

  The story of how this came about was known, in part, to almost every child in England, told as a bedtime tale to put them soundly asleep.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ so they were told, ‘in the year eighteen eighty-five, Phnaarg, the evil King of Mars, declared war upon Earth and sent a mighty fleet of spaceships to attack the British Empire. These fearsome warships landed in Surrey and from them came terrible three-legged engines of death. The soldiers of the Crown fought bravely but could not best the Martians, who employed most wicked and ungentlemanly weapons against them. All would have been lost if not for patriotic bacteria in the service of Her Majesty the Queen, God bless her, which bravely killed the horrid invaders, and everyone lived happily ever after. Now go to sleep or I will give you a smack.’

  Which was all well and good.

  There was, however, a second half to this tale, but few were the children who ever heard it.

  ‘To avoid the risk of further Martian attacks,’ so the unheard half goes, ‘Mr Winston Churchill took control of the situation and formulated a top—secret plan. With the aid of senior boffins Lord Charles Babbage and Lord Nikola Tesla, several of the abandoned Martian spaceships were converted for human piloting. They were then passengered by the incurables from the isolation hospitals of the Home Counties and dispatched to the Red Planet. It was effectively the birth of germ warfare, and it put paid to all the Martians of Mars.

  ‘Thus the British Empire encompassed another world and Queen Victoria became Empress of both India and Mars. With the evil Martians now defeated, other inhabitants of the solar system came forward to establish friendly relations with Earth, which then joined Jupiter and Venus to form a family of planets.

  ‘British engineering combined with captured Martian technology allowed Mr Babbage and Mr Tesla to take giant steps forwards in the field of science and by eighteen ninety-nine, the British Empire had reached the very height of its glory.

  ‘The End.’

  It was all in all an inspiring tale with a happy-ever-after, but not one that the British Government sought to publicise. The British Government felt that the British public would not take kindly to the business of the incurables from the isolation hospitals being sent off on their one-way trips to Mars.

  The British ‘public’ were tonight notable only for their non-presence at Syon Park. The British Government, on the other hand, were most well represented.

  The young and dashing Mr Winston Churchill was here, discussing the merits of Jovian cigars with the young and equally dashing Mr Septimus Grey, Governor of the Martian Territories. Sir Peter Harrow, a gentleman generally described on the charge-sheets as being the Member for North Brentford, conversed with the playwright Oscar Wilde regarding the conspicuousness of prostitution in the Chiswick area. ‘Conspicuous by its absence,’ was Sir Peter’s considered opinion.

  The controversial cleric Cardinal Cox shared a joke about beards and baldness with his cousin Kit, the celebrated monster-hunter and first man on the Moon. The Society Columnist from The Times had quite given up on writing down names from a guest list that read like a précis of Debrett’s and had taken instead to ogling the ladies and tasting the champagne and crisps.

  Hired minions of the foreign persuasion moved amongst the exalted congress bearing trays of sweetmeats, petits fours and canapés. Champagne danced into cut—crystal glasses and ladies brought loveliness to a pretty perfection while Mazael’s Clockwork Quartet did battle with the unearthly acoustics of the Bananary. The Moon shone down from a star-strewn sky and a distant church bell chimed the hour of nine.

  All seemed right with the Empire upon this magical evening, all at peace and the way that all should be.

  With such champagne and such nibbles and amidst such glittering company, the more charitable present could almost forgive the Bananary.

  Almost.

  But not quite.

  But almost.

  And as Lord Brentford strolled amidst the assembled multitude, bound for the flag-decked rostrum from which he would deliver a speech that had been four years in the preparation, it did not cross his mind that anything untoward might possibly occur to confound his schemes and spoil this grand occasion.

  But sadly there can sometimes be a fly within the ointment, no matter how clean one has kept the pot or tightly screwed on the lid. For even as Lord Brentford strolled, his mind engaged in worthy thoughts, something that could truly be described as ‘untoward’ was rushing backwards through the aether, bound for Syon House.

  No fly was this, although it flew.

  For it was indeed a monkey.

  A monkey that through its actions would come to change not only the present, but the past and the future, too.

  Onwards rushed this anomalous ape.

  As onwards strolled the oblivious Lord Brentford.

  2

  oth bearded and bald was Lord Brentford, yet oddly birdlike, too. His eyes were as dark as a raven’s wing, his nose as hooked as a seagull’s bill. His suit was cut from kiwi pelts and his burnished and buckled big black boots had trodden moors on pheasant shoots. His hands flapped somewhat as he spoke and he liked poached eggs for breakfast.

  As he made his way to the flag-hung rostrum, as unaware as ever he had been of impending monkey mayhem, the crowd politely parted, polite converse ceased, polite applause rippled and the members of his household staff bowed their heads with politeness.

  Upon his unexpected return to Syon House, the noble lord had been appalled not only by the beastly Bananary but also by the extraordinary number of servants the present incumbent had in his employ. There were pages and parlour maids, chore-boys and chambermaids, gentlemen’s gentlemen, lackeys and laundrymen, kitchen boys, coachmen, porters and porch-men, bed-makers, tea-makers, chaplains and cheese-makers, carers and sweepers, cooks and housekeepers and even a eunuch who tended a parrot named Peter. Not to mention a veritable garrison of gardeners (all highly skilled in the arts of tropical horticulture, Lord Brentford. noted).

  To say that this multitude swarmed the great house and gardens like so many two-legged bees would be to paint an inaccurate picture of the situation. The majority of the minions draped themselves over settles and settees reading newspapers or playing games of Snap. To the now fiercely flapping Lord Brentford, it appeared that the present incumbent had, for reasons known only to himself, chosen to employ this substantial staff as little more than adornments to Syon House.

  His lordship noted ruefully that the exception lay with the gardeners, whom he found to be hard at work cheerfully uprooting the century-old knot garden preparatory to the planting in of further banana trees.

  Lord Brentford sacked each and every one upon the instant, then took down his now dust-cloaked double-action twelve-bore fowling piece from above the marble fireplace and went in search of the present incumbent.

  The present incumbent, however, was not to be found. The staff, now packing their bags and cheerfully helping themselves to portions of his lordship’s family silver, had little to offer regarding the present incumbent or his whereabouts.

  During his search of the premises, Lord Brentford came upon a wardrobe containing a selection of the mystery fellow’s clothes. Fine hand-tailored clothes were these, bearing the label of his lordship’s Piccadilly tailor. This discovery now added mystery to mystery, for the missing person, this despoiler of English country houses, was clearly not as other men. The clothes had been tailored for a being who was positively dwarf-like, possessed of arms of a prodigious length and some kind of extra appendage that sprouted from his backside — for each pair of trousers bore a curious snood affair affixed to its rear parts.

  Lord Brentford strutted, stormed and flapped from room to room, discharging his fowling piece into the frescoed ceilings, which helped to prompt a rapid departure by the servants he had so recently and unceremoniously dismissed.

&nbs
p; At length, and with the aid of brandy from a bottle laid down fifty years before that had happily remained untouched in his cellar, he finally calmed himself to a state resembling that of reason and produced from his pocket a copy of The Times.[1]

  Having located the section dedicated to Domestics, for the hiring of he applied himself to the telephonic communication device that he of the freakish trousers had taken the liberty of having installed and demanded the operator connect him to Miss Dolly Rokitt, the proprietress of a Mayfair-based domestics agency.

  Lord Brentford’s requirements were swiftly made clear. He wished to employ the following.

  A chef. ‘And not a damned Johnny Frenchman.’ An upstairs maid. ‘And make her a pretty ‘un, not some frumpish strumpet.’

  A monkey butler. ‘Cos a gentleman ain’t a gentleman without an ape to serve him.’

  And a bootboy and general factotum. ‘And get me one by the name of Jack, for such is the noble tradition. Or old charter. Or something.’

  Miss Dolly Rokitt was politeness personified and replied with eagerness that just such a four-person staff had lately been signed to her books and were even now crated up in her cellar awaiting a call such as his lordship was now making. So to speak.

  ‘Then bung the boxes on a four-wheeled growler and dispatch them here post—haste,’ was what his lordship had to say about that.

  Miss Rokitt complied with these instructions and then returned to that dearest indulgence of feminine fingers, embroidery.

  Lord Brentford. poured himself another brandy and lazed in his family seat.